DOSBox emulates a 16-bit environment, but with limitations. For instance, networking support is virtually non-existent. If that doesn't bother you, DOSBox works very well indeed, and it can even be used on non-Windows platforms (e.g., Android). One other factor though is that because DOSBox is a CPU emulator, it can be a tad slow (but still, it is often a lot faster than the old 16-bit systems for which those applications were originally written.)
If you are using Windows 7 Professional/Enterprise/Ultimate, you can download and install "Windows XP Mode", which is a Microsoft Virtual PC image with Windows XP preinstalled (see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/install-and-use-windows-xp-mode-in-windows-7). There is a fair degree of integration; for instance, applications installed on the Windows XP image show up in the Windows 7 Start menu. Windows XP runs inside a 32-bit virtual machine and it can, in turn, run 16-bit applications.
On all versions of Windows 7, you are of course free to install either Virtual PC or some other virtualization product (e.g., Oracle VirtualBox, VMWare), install the desired 16-bit or 32-bit operating system and run applications on the virtual machine. The integration will not be as good as with Windows XP Mode.
If you will run the application in your installed system no. Because the Os changed also library which will be used. Drivers used from former OS's are also incompatible with the modern OS.
The problem with old applications is they arn't upward compatible. Therfore the previous sugested approaches to use an emulation shall be used in case you like to use the application inside your OS.
But if you want using the system in a sandbox way. To test or to run the application in a secure system to prevent any demage of your system than a virtual environment shall be used. An advantage of a virtual system is to reset the system after runing or testing the old application if something went wrong.
you could also try the windws compatiblity mode, In case this is a win16 application, however for older dos aaplications DOSbox works well, also, you may want to create a virtual machine and install DOS to have the best of both worlds.